Japanese crime writer Keigo Higashino is running late for our interview — his first since 2008 — and when he arrives at the top-floor cafe of Tokyo’s swanky Royal Park Hotel, he is at first not particularly talkative. The 53-year-old best-selling author, dressed in simple black trousers and a gray sweater, says he doesn’t like publicity because he doesn’t want to be recognized on the street.

I make small talk about snowboarding — he’s just back from a few days in the mountains — and eventually Mr. Higashino loosens up.

“Some writers aim to move their readers, others want to write beautiful sentences. I want readers to be continually surprised by my ideas,” he says.

Mr. Higashino started out as an engineer at an auto parts company in the western city of Osaka. He wrote stories in the evenings and on weekends for three years before becoming a full-time writer. More than 25 years later, his book sales number in the millions and have won numerous awards in Japan. Many of them have been made into movies, including “Byakuyakou” (“Into The White Night”), now showing at the Berlin Film Festival.

Mr. Higashino’s first major foray into the U.S. market is “The Devotion of Suspect X,” which was published in the U.S. on Feb. 1st. (Another novel, “Naoko,” had a limited English print run in 2004.)

The novel is a taut thriller in which a single mother murders her abusive ex-husband to protect her teenage daughter and then accepts an offer of help from her neighbor and secret admirer, a math genius called Ishigami who hears the commotion from next door, to conceal the crime. “Trust me,” says Ishigami as he sets about devising the perfect alibi for the object of his obsession. “Logical thinking will get us through this.”

“Murder mysteries cross well between cultures because people have bad sides as well as good,” says Mr. Higashino. “People show their true natures in the act of committing a crime.”

“The Devotion of Suspect X” is part of the author’s popular “Dr. Galileo” series, which feature a physics professor with a knack for solving impenetrable cases. The novel won Japan’s Naoki Prize in 2005, and the foreign rights have been sold as far afield as China, Thailand, France, Russia and Spain. It was also turned into a movie in Japan in 2008.

The book is in some ways a classic puzzler, but although the simple style, brisk pacing and sizeable twist at the end will be familiar to fans of the genre, “The Devotion of Suspect X” also has unmistakably Japanese elements. Much of the plot unfolds in gritty, old-Tokyo locations — such as a local bento lunch shop in which the murderess works — and the victim is strangled with the electrical cord from a kotatsu, a heated, quilt-covered table found in most Japanese houses.

With the killer clearly identified in the early chapters, the novel is also not the typical “whodunit” brand of murder mystery — instead it’s the question of “how they try to get away with it” that drives the plot forward. Mr. Higashino says this format is common in Japanese crime fiction, where feelings of loyalty and the oppressive weight of human relations are classic catalysts for murder and dark pacts between neighbors or co-workers to dispose of bodies seem to be a recurring theme.

“Japanese people like it this way,” he says. “Rather than explain the significance of everything at the end of the book, I wanted to describe the characters’ actions and intentions at the beginning so I could better portray their feelings of guilt and anguish.”

The mystery-crime genre has a long history in Japan where, unlike in the U.S., it is often treated as serious literary work rather than disposable entertainment. Classic writers such as Edogawa Rampo and Seicho Matsumoto remain popular for their depictions of the darker side of Japanese society, and Mr. Higashino, talking animatedly by now, sees his work as firmly rooted in this tradition.

“Although there are Western writers that I like, I am much more influenced by Japanese authors and so my work naturally has that Japanese sense of old-fashioned loyalty and concern for human feeling,” he says.

St. Martin’s Press has set an ambitious print run of 75,000 copies for “The Devotion of Suspect X,” in the U.S., and says it bought the rights to the book before interest in global detective stories took off following the runaway success of Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” But Mr. Higashino says he won’t be measuring success in the U.S. in terms of number of copies sold.

“I want people to read my work and come to understand how Japanese people think, love and hate,” he says. “I want them to be impressed that there is a Japanese person who came up with such unusual stories.”

Comments (5 of 6)

Awesome writing, couldnt put it down, Yukawa a cross between Dr Spock and Colombo. Salvation of a Saint another gem.

2:58 am February 12, 2011

Anonymous wrote:

I read Devotion of Suspect X. EXCELLENT. Through the actions and dialogue of the characters, you do get a unique take on the culture of Japan. And you won't guess the mystery until it's revealed. Very satisfying!